DiFi In Trouble

In my work as a commercial real estate appraiser, I am often in contact with the biggest commercial brokerage firm in the world--CB Richard Ellis. In fact, a friend of mine works for the company, and I called another one of their other brokers today. That's why I was surprised to see that CB Richard Ellis is part of a war-profiteering scandal surrounding one of the U.S. Senators representing my home state of California.

Reportedly, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee, for which she was chairperson and ranking member for 6 years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband's ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein. Apparently, Feinstein's husband, Richard C. Blum, has a controlling interest in CBRE, which "holds congressionally funded contracts to lease office space to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also is involved in redeveloping military bases turned over to the private sector. In 2005, CB Richard Ellis made $100 million in federal contracts, only half of which had been part of full and open competitive bidding."

I'm kind of bummed because, even though I mostly disagree with her politically, I actually like Senator Feinstein. She's typically fair-minded and reasonable--and a helluva lot better than our other Senator.

But, Captain Ed makes the salient point:

During the 2006 election, Feinstein's party made a lot of hay out of non-competitve contracting by the government. Democrats railed especially about Halliburton, even though Halliburton won 95% of its contract dollars by full and open competition. Now we see that Feinstein herself had no problem with non-competitive practices, as long as it meant stuffing her own pockets with taxpayer money.

Michelle Malkin reports:

The NYTimes is demanding an investigation. Arianna Huffington has launched ads lambasting Feinstein. The left-wing blogosphere is an uproar over Feinstein's war profiteering.

Kidding.

Republican Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham is serving jail time for taking bribes in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in government contracts. While there is no evidence that Feinstein accepted bribes--and therefore no laws appear to have been broken--it was certainly unethical to award multi-million-dollar no-bid contracts to her husband's companies. It will be interesting to see if this gets much play in the MSM.